The Medical Society of P.E.I. 159th annual meeting was held at Stanley Bridge Country Inn on Saturday to discuss three resolutions including cyber wellness, alcohol addictions and reproductive care.

Dr. David Bannon, president of the society, said the emergence of the Internet and the Internet culture creates certain problems society hasn’t had to deal with before and cyber bullying is one of them.

“That is a very challenging issue that needs attention,” Bannon said.

Chris Simpson, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said the traditional way people used to be bullied, in the schoolyard with words and at times physical violence, has given way to the digital environment of cyber bullying.

“It’s a bit more insidious because you can’t necessarily see that it is happening.”

Simpson said its their intent to develop a pilot project to view and deal with it differently.

As part of the resolution, the medical society has partnered with Parry Aftab, an expert in the area of cyber wellness.

The second resolution discussed was alcohol addictions on P.E.I. which Simpson said is a disease that crosses all social spectrums.

“The key is to develop programs that can help people recognize and treat these addictions in a non-judgmental way instead of casting people to the outside to recover from a difficult problem.”

The third resolution discussed was reproductive care and Dr. Jerry O’Hanley, co-chair of the health care and promotion committee of the medical society, said he feels the program was much more dynamic in days gone by.

“It seems to be somewhat under resourced. We need to try to get to a place where we were before,” he said.

Bannon said, in regards to fertility treatments, nothing in specific was discussed, but it is all a part of the package.

‘That is one thing that I truly appreciated about the effort that our members who brought forward that motion did is they were very inclusive and they sketched out a need that ran the whole continuum from preconception to after delivery and postpartum.”

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